oh! another one of mine! its not a game i didn't expect to be good, but my best purchase by far.
i remember seeing an Xplay review of a strategy game which i thought looked pretty cool. im fairly sure it was rise of legends, but i really dont know. a couple years later, someone at my brother's high school tells him about torrents, how you can get games for free. so we decided to pick up a couple old games we had never played before but we thought were worth a shot.
he got portal (we both beat it in about 2 hours, and its next on my purchase list so i can stop feeling guilty for not giving valve the money they earned with that one), and i remembered that old game which i thought looked cool but all i can remember was a short clip of a machine resembling the steampunk spider in the wild wild west movie (the one with will smith), and the g4 opinion of it having a mediocre story. i started looking around for reviews of it so i could remember the name, and caught sight of what i thought it was, the first dawn of war title.
upon torrenting and beating dawn of war 1, i promptly bought it and the next 2 expansions on steam. from there i have played/beaten all of them (but soulstorm), dawn of war 2 and expansions, and purchased and am in the process of painting about 200$ worth of 4th edition Tau miniatures (the battleforce, 2 extra squads of fire warriors, and an extra crisis suit if anyone cares). so yeah, confusing something for warhammer 40k: dawn of war is the best mistake i have ever made. (hell, it even got me to meet my best friend(s) because i overheard him talking about it and jumped in)
and if anyone doesn't know, the 4th edition miniatures is referring to the tabletop game which i now play occasionally (would be more frequently, but a friend got me and 3 others into a dungeons and dragons campaign, and a call of cthulhu campaign, which i find absolutely fan-fucking-tastic, despite my many near-death experiences. [seriously he popped a fucking hero-slayer on us at level 3 and it ate all of my arms and legs because he was being forgiving that day (D&D). he also had the necronomicon bite my genitalia off (Call o' Cthulhu). luckily i got it back])